In The Home Stretch

Health and Wellness: Mental Health Continuum

Our Social Emotional Learning curriculum, along with our mental health supports make sure that the school district is providing tools for our kids that help them develop as a whole child. This is a critical part of their learning journey and their path to becoming adults. Staff will provide overviews and recommendations on our curriculum and supports.

I wouldn’t be able to do this topic justice within the span of this newsletter, so I’m glad staff is providing the deep dive at the meeting.

Reimagining Castro Update

Reimagining Castro has been part of the district’s mission to provide world-class educations to all of the families in our schools, regardless of which campus they attend. This presentation will cover the initial results from Year 1 and provide recommendations for the upcoming Year 2.

This will be a critical time for Castro Elementary, and I’m eager to see the new Principal, Vernorris Taylor, step up to the challenge and opportunity!

Oversight Committee Reports

As part of our parcel taxes and bonds, the District has established oversight committees for each category to ensure that public funds are spent for their authorized purposes and to report to both the Board and the public how those funds are spent. Both the Parcel Tax Oversight Committee and the Bond Oversight Committee will present their reports for review by the Board and the public.

Additionally, we will review the establishment of the new parcel tax oversight committee to cover our recently passed Measure AA parcel tax.

Staff Housing Project

As our initial residents have been early adopters of our Staff Housing, they have borne some of the initial startup costs in inconveniences and reduced services. This is often the difficulty of being early, but we want to ensure our residents are receiving a great housing experience, hence why staff recommends that the Board approve a one-time plan to credit tenants for the difficulties.

Federal Funding Discussion

With so much uncertainty around program funding from the federal-level, along with potential economic uncertainty in the future, I have been particularly eager to make sure we do our best prepare for changes in our budgeting assumptions for the near future. Staff will present the overall landscape of federal funding that the district receives, along with other broader pressure points we might experience.

Much of this situation will be in flux over the coming weeks and months, but I am glad we are making sure the Board has sufficient background and understanding to give the appropriate direction in the future if things change.

First Reading of Board Policies and Board Bylaws

This continues the work of recommending policy updates to the full Board for discussion and adoption. In a previous newsletter, I described the workflow and how we will be presenting these in batches in order to avoid overwhelming the full Board, while continuing to make progress on keeping our policies up-to-date.

Part of this group of policies (BP 5141.52 Suicide Prevention, BP 6159 Individual Education Program, BP 6159.2 Nonpublic Nonsectarian School and Agency for Special Education) deals with how we support our students. We also have two minor updates to our bylaws, which the CSBA included as part of its regular review and clarification process.

Finally, we will consider BP 6144 - Controversial Issues, which provides guidelines to administrators and teachers as they approach instruction related to a controversial issue.